​My parents had this painting long before they ever had me. As a child, I had always liked it, but when I started horseback riding, I began to love it.

My parents thought that if I were going to ride, I should ride often. Within a year, the owner of the barn took my mother aside, “We think Mary should lease a horse to show…” and so it began. That first horse was a rangy intellectual, an older gentleman who taught me well. He was a bay – a horse with a light brown coat and a black mane and tail. I was smitten.

After a year, my trainer approached my mother, “Mary has really improved. She should get a horse that can take her places. I know about this one mare….” And my lovely Brevon was replaced with silky and kind chestnut Summer Hill.

I showed Summer when I was thirteen and fourteen. The show schedule was so intense that her delicate legs started to fail her. My parents were told, “It’s time to look into another horse.”

I leased a horse that surely did quantum physics for fun and calculated pi to pass time between classes at horse shows. Six Pack was an enormous gray horse with a personality to match.

Years after I stopped riding, I was looking at that painting with my father.

“Funny how my horses looked like those horses in the painting.”

“It’s not funny at all,” answered Tata, “You wanted those horses and you got them.” He smiled and looked at me over the top of his glasses, “At least that is what they would say, right?”

“Geesh, pops, you mean sometimes they are right?”

And the two of us turned our attention to the painting again.

I was rolling bandages in the junk stall, when my trainer came into the barn. I looked up and smiled. He paused a minute to take a drag from his cigarette, then nodded at me, putting his hand in his pocket.  He tossed me the keys to the pick-up truck.

“Mar, go get some donuts, will ya? Be back: you have a lesson in an hour.” He handed me some money, took another drag of his cigarette, and slouched off.

I looked at the warm keys in my hand, my heart ricocheting inside my chest. I was fourteen.
I put the rolled bandage on the shelf and the money in my vest pocket.

I pulled at my vest a bit, walked outside, and opened the door to the white pick-up.  It smelled full of stale cigarette smoke, hay, horse, hormones, and the piney disinfectant we used on the barn floor. I had to reach up to get in and I had to pull the seat as close as possible to reach the steering wheel.  Once up there, I looked up at the quilted ceiling of the truck’s cab and unleashed a huge smile.

I played with the warm metal of the key before watching it fit in the ignition. “Click, click,” and the super-size truck turned over. The key in the ignition did everything for me.  I let out a long breath.

Rubbing my hands together, I put them on the cold plastic steering wheel, and fitted my stubby fingers into the bumpy underside of the smooth wheel. I shifted to drive, and the wheels of the pick-up crunched over the crushed stone parking lot, then pressed forward heavily on to the asphalt.

The pick-up was going at a steady 40 mph but my heart was bounding like Secretariat’s gallop.
It was Heaven, moving along the road. I passed the corn fields on the right and the little cemetery on the left. There was a stop sign.  I tested how much the brake worked, and prudently decided just to take my foot off the gas and let the truck slow down, roll down, to a stop.

I was feeling this, loving the movement of wheels over ground. I turned right and the long, straight stretch into town gave way to me. Going over the slight hill at a cautious speed felt like flying – but the whole drive I kept checking: speed, mirrors, and placement on the road, my posture. Even paying attention to all the technical details, I couldn’t help but soar.

I got the donuts; I can’t even remember what kind. I know I drove back to the barn the way the boys at the barn did: left hand at 8 o’clock, right hand tucked under my right thigh, so confident. When I gave the donuts, the change, and the keys back to my trainer, we could both sense the shift.

“Why don’t you ride the new horse for your lesson? Let’s see what you two can do.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Let’s.”

ACT III – The Pitch

“Chausseures, Shoe Boutique”? Really? When did you ever come in here?”

“I was in here last break with Martha, I have been watching these shoes – Look! They’re on sale!”

“They’re yellow.”

“They are the color of butter – Feel them!”

“Hmm, soft. Well, they are on sale,” Mama weakened, “Will you wear them?”

“Are you kidding? All the time!”

And I planned to….

ACT IV – What Happens When You Contemplate Replacing Faithful Loafers

I went back to college, and the very next night I went out in my beautiful buttery shoes. Since it was rainy and a Monday night, things were pretty mellow in College Town. My group of friends and I stayed at the bar until closing and walked back to where the college van would pick us up. Half-way to the van stop, one of my friends realized that she had left her denim jacket in the bar. We all jogged back to the bar, but it was closed.

“Don’t worry, my brother says that every building can be broken into.”

We cased the joint. Round back, we found a wooden fence that surrounded the rear exit. We peeked through a gap in the fence and saw that the back door was ajar. I stretched my hands up to the top of the fence and bent my left knee and waited for someone to give me a leg-up and over the fence. No one did.

“A leg-up? Boost me over, I’ll get it!”

Somehow I got over, but I landed in a mud slick. The smooth leather soles of my shoes had no traction and I slid to my knees. Since I was already down low, I ran in a crouch to the door. It had one of those chain locks.  Inserting my hand, I pressed the door against my arm so I could reach in and unchain the lock.

“Hello? Hello…?” I whispered. I walked through the storage area and out into the bar. My friend’s jacket was on the seat of the booth where we had been sitting. I grabbed it and ran out the back. I moved a crate closer to the dumpster so I could make steps and get back over the fence. I landed on the outside with a sick sucking sound.

I handed the jacket to my friend and looked at my shoes and sighed.

“I wonder if these will clean up?”
​
They never did.

Act I – Old Friends

I have a pair of loafers. They are beyond repair, but I am too loyal to throw out. I bought them at the Bass Shoe Outlet in Ellsworth, Maine sometime around the mid-1970s. They came from the clearance rack and they cost me a cool $2.00.
​
When I wasn’t wearing my Bean boots, I was wearing those loafers. In high school, they ripped a few times, and each time I took them to Ex-Marine Johnny, the cobbler, and he would stitch them up with a determined, “Let’s see if that holds for a few more months.”

One day in college, they ripped behind the stitches and I was forced to improvise a repair with duct tape.

Now, I only wear the loafers when I am painting. They make painting a truly Zen experience, one demanding a deep and mindful calm, for only in such a grounded state is it possible to apply the paint evenly while not slipping out of the loafers and off the ladder.

​

Act II – Or, Where Loafers and Father are Manipulated

Mama picked me up from college to take me home for a long weekend. My father gave me a kiss when I walked in the door. As he moved aside to make room for me in the back hall, he saw my loafers, all wrapped in silver duct tape.

“Alice!” He raised his voice slightly at my mother, “Can’t you buy this girl some new shoes?!”
I knew that the loafers had triggered this response in my father, and I decided to see just how much I could turn this to my advantage.

I had seen a pair of pale yellow glove leather flats made in Italy at the fancy shoe boutique and although I am not a shoe person, I wanted those flats. I plotted.

Before going out that night, I changed clothes. I paired the duct tape loafers with some ripped and patched jeans and my ragged “7th AB” sweatshirt, then jogged down the back stairs and into the kitchen.

“See ya’ Pops, I am going to meet up with Anne…”

“Okay,” he started, then he looked at me, “You are NOT going out of the house dressed like THAT….”

“Yeah, I am. We are just going to Park Ave….”

“ALICE! Can’t you buy this girl some clothes?!”

Mama appeared in the doorway. “Oh, I can buy her new clothes, but can I make her wear them….?”

“Alice….”

Mama half-raised an eye-brow, “We’ll go out when you get back.”
​
I raised my fingers in a “peace” sign, gave them each a kiss, and exited.

My father noted that David Bowie and I had a similar warning smile: a brief flash of canines when irked or threatened.

Once, in college, I went to a dance. I had some sort of ultra-short hair dyed an unnatural color and I think I was wearing a turtleneck and jeans.

I was dancing with friends when my shoulders were grabbed and I was swung around by a lunk of a drunk. He gave me a shake that made my head lurch forward and knock back and then he shook me a second time, his eyes full of hostile frustration. He obviously felt justified in his actions as he bent to look in my face and shouted:

“WHAT are you anyway?! I mean, like WHAT are you? Are you a punk, are you a prep? What?”

I had never been shaken – I have many blows to the head from falling off horses and from being a lacrosse goalie – but aggression off the field had never been physical. I had learned from my time in a lacrosse goal cage that sometimes a brief lack of movement could be more intimidating than movement.

I became very still, and then stretched my shoulders out in such a way that the lunk’s fingers loosened their grip. I pulled my lips up jaggedly and smiled, showing those canines.

“Me? I am a Brzustowicz.”
​
I shrugged his paws off my shoulders and I danced out of the room – alone.

I have good teeth so it is only natural, according to the rule, “you like what you don’t have,” that I have always been attracted to guys who have funky teeth. Hence, the initial allure of David Bowie, with his jagged and dangerous teeth.

When I studied in Spain as a junior in college, there was this bar with a bar-tender who was a nearly perfect double for David, so perfect that I used to joke that it was Bowie doing research for a film role.

Well, it wasn’t Bowie, but I liked to drag friends in to the place, order a drink, just to look at this guy. One evening, he asked me to stay until closing. I brought a friend and we sat and drank so long and so much that her head started to do that drop-and-catch thing that happens when you are falling asleep. I was a drink away from slurring my words.

And this kind man (who looked almost just-like David Bowie) came over, put his hand on my shoulder, and pulled his lips up in an uneven smile. “You will come home with me, yes?”
​
My friend’s head jerked up and she looked at me with watery blue eyes, then slid off the bar-stool. The seduction of the smile was broken.

I slid off my perch, pulled my shoulders up in a shrug, and just knew. I shook my head, stretched up to give him a kiss on each cheek, and inhaled the sweet smell of beer. This was as close as I was ever going to get to Bowie.

I spent my last $80 to see David Bowie in concert in Madrid. I didn’t think too much about the decision, for Madrid is easy to walk around and I had a box of “Maria” cookies, so I was set for the two weeks until I would get paid, and I knew it would be worth any discomfort to see Bowie.

I had seen him in Syracuse, but going to concerts in Spain is a lesson in beats; Spaniards pick up on rhythms, clap, and synchronize in a way that carries concerts into areas that often surprise even the performers.

My older siblings didn’t really dabble in David Bowie’s music too much, so I was proud of my discovered treasure when I saw “Man to Fell to Earth.” It was his strength and fragility that pulled me to his music, his own complexity and directness that kept me devoted.

I have loved David for years. We had a secret (known only to me) empathy link via our hair. When I saw “The Man Who Fell to Earth” I had just cut my long blonde hair off and was left a mousey short-haired girl in glasses.  Some friends insisted I had changed because my hair had, so I kept my friends but started to change my hair more and more often.

I am morbidly shy and my hair has been a way to test myself and to grow up with a type of safety net: it wasn’t me, it was shaved-headed me. It wasn’t me; it was the red-head.  This has been an easy way to have the world come to me and to learn how to deal with it on my terms – nothing quite offends society as much as the person who does not fit in neatly. Over the decades I would see a picture of David and realize, as we aged, that we always have had similar hair-styles and colors.
​
The similarity stops there, unfortunately. I could never carry a tune and the ability to make music seems to me like the most magical of arts. I can change my hair, though, and feel that brave hair push me forward into the world. 

The poodle we had when I was growing up was epileptic, and that taught us compassion better than a Golden Book.

Since our poodle needed anti-seizure meds, we also learned how to give a dog a pill. Quite young, I knew how to slip one of the small white tablets to the back of our dog’s throat, then to massage her throat until she swallowed. Of course, if there was also a bit of ham, all the better, since she had a particular affection for ham (documented elsewhere).*

In my parents’ house we had a cabinet for all medications, vitamins, and aspirins. It could be that our house was incredibly noisy with eight kids and a dog, but once, when one of my sisters had her boyfriend visiting, the boyfriend developed a sudden raging headache.

“Wait here, I’ll get you an aspirin,” offered my lovely sister, her long black hair trailing over her shoulders like a silk cape.

She came back in a rush with a pill and a glass of water. Her beau took it and suggested that they “kick off.” They left the house in his snazzy red car.

Thank goodness there is a stop sign at the end of our street, because that is where the pill kicked in. My sister’s boyfriend slumped to the right of the steering wheel. My sister, quick thinker, turned the car off and started to laugh nervously.
​
You can guess what error she had made.  Fortunately the effects were not lasting or severe.
 
 
*http://www.keepmaryoutofthekitchen.com/blog/archives/04-2015/2. April, 2015 blogs

​The first dog I ever had was impeccable. Sure, she stole blueberry muffins and fancy Polish hams, and yes, she bit people, but those people usually deserved it. She was also an epileptic. She would be walking and then suddenly topple over, rigid and shaking.
 
It was terrifying. Sure, I had seven older siblings, but only the dog really understood me. The dog would drop and I would drop by her side and watch. Sometimes I would cover her with a blanket. I would put my chubby child-hand on her belly and keep it over her heart, willing her to relax and breathe normally. I knew the fit would pass on her time, not mine. It was okay, I would wait with her.

When she was asked about the casting for The Force Awakens, Carrie Fisher said “They didn’t want to hire me; they wanted to hire about three fourths of me….” Lingering over that observation, I remember a story:

A lad ripped a phone number from an ad taped to a lamp-post, an ad for guitar lessons. He met with his new teacher, a shaggy-haired, Earth shoe-wearing, faded t-shirt clad guy. The lad learned how to hold the guitar, how to place his hands on the strings, and how to play some chords. After about an hour his teacher smiled and nodded, “Yep, good enough.”

We push our children to get all “A’s,” let ourselves be made to believe that making Varsity as an 8th-grader is key, and get pushed into more community service than Mother Teresa would have had time for. Women are expected to have a bikini body two months after giving birth.  Women of a certain age strive to look a half of that age and to weigh (thank you Ms. Fischer) a quarter that.  But since we can never be quite all we are told we can and should be, I offer, instead, being good enough.
​
Good enough to stop and see the exhaustion in a cashier’s eyes, good enough to let a harried driver pass us without giving them a rude gesture, good enough to let our children be children, and good enough to ourselves, once in a while, to give ourselves a pat on the back.
 2015 was not a great year, but yep, it was good enough.